Crazy Love by Tara Janzen Read Free Book Online Page B

machine, where Hawkins was reading a transmission as it came over the line.
    Superman did not look happy.
    “It’s a goddamn commendation from the secretary of defense.” Hawkins pulled the fax free, still reading. “A goddamn commendation.”
    Shit.
That’s all he needed at eight o’clock in the morning.
    “Jakarta…Jemaah,” Hawkins muttered, scanning the page. “Valor in action under the direst circumstances…tenacity…subsequent es—”
    Abruptly, Hawkins stopped, his gaze frozen to the page. Then he shot a rapier-sharp glance across the office.
    “Escape”—that was the word Superman had choked on, and quite frankly, Dylan didn’t want to talk about it. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t going to talk about it, especially in front of Skeeter.
    With a softly muttered curse, Hawkins shifted his attention back to the fax and continued reading.
    “Sumba,” he said after a moment, speaking the word in a voice so cold, Dylan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
    He took a careful breath, told himself to calm down. He wasn’t surprised the island of Sumba was mentioned in the report. He just didn’t like being reminded of the damn place, not that he wasn’t thinking about Sumba and Hamzah Negara, the bastard who owned it, twenty-five out of every twenty-four hours in the day right now.
    Hawkins didn’t say another word, just stood there, staring at the fax, until finally, after an endless, tension-filled minute, he folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket.
    “Shouldn’t I, uh, make a copy of that for the files?” Skeeter asked. “Maybe scan it into a documents folder?”
    “No,” both Dylan and Hawkins said at the same time, then looked at each other.
    “No,” Hawkins repeated, shifting his attention back to the plans.
    Dylan hazarded a quick glance in Skeeter’s direction. She was poised like a cat on the edge of her chair, doughnut paused in midair, curiosity damn near perking up her ears, and her gaze locked on Superman’s pocket.
    “But it’s a commendation,” she said. “General Grant likes to stockpile those things, use them for budget fodder.”
    “Not this commendation,” Dylan said in a tone that would brook no argument. He wasn’t too worried. The girl was nothing but trouble, but she was hell and gone out of luck if she thought she could lift that fax off Superman without him knowing it. Nobody was that good. His secret was safe, at least from her. Hawkins was another story, and Dylan could tell by the grim expression on Superman’s face that he was going to want to talk about the Jakarta mission—a lot.
    Too bad.
    “I know just where to put it,” Skeeter said, interrupting his train of thought.
    He slanted her another glance. He obviously needed to work on his brook-no-argument tone.
    “No.”
    “We have half a dozen folders on him, including the black ones, the ones that need top-secret clearance. If you don’t want to see the commendation again, we could deep-six it into one of those, but it should be archived.”
    Deep-sixing into black files? Since when had she had access to SDF’s top-secret documents?
    He no sooner thought the question than he knew the answer: since she’d damn well figured out how to access them herself, that’s since when. The girl ran wild at Steele Street.
    And who in the hell “him” was she talking about? “Half a dozen files on who?”
    “Negara,” she said. “Hamzah Negara, the Indonesian warlord whose fortress is on the island of Sumba in the Sabu Sea.”
    If she’d meant to freeze him into place, she’d done a damn good job, and suddenly he regretted every ounce of Scotch. It was churning in his stomach, and if he got sick, he was going to feel like a royal fool.
    “He’s billing himself as an Islamic jihadist these days,” she continued. “But he’s cut more than a few deals with the CIA when it was to his advantage. His legitimate businesses include controlling interest in the Java Resorts Group, and